Last winter, with home heating oil at record highs, my partner and I spent nearly $3000 to heat a 1000 square foot house for four months. By summer, oil prices were even higher and we couldn't get anyone to deliver the oil no matter what we were willing to pay for it.

It turned out that the credit crunch had made it impossible for local home heating oil companies to keep enough oil on hand to supply every customer who wanted to buy ahead of the next price increase. I live in Michigan, and it gets damn cold up here by November or so, so I'll be honest: That bit of news freaked me out.

Suddenly, we were faced with what appeared to be a serious possiblilty that, come winter, we'd be wearing lots of layers and trying to keep our pipes from freezing. And we weren't alone, either.

Since then, the cost of home heating oil has come down a bit, and after six months of wheedling and crying we were able to find a company that would fill our oil tank. So we have a tank of oil. But last year, we used four tanks of oil over the course of the winter, and it was a mild winter and we keep our therostat at 65 degrees.

What to do?

We did come up with some solutions. I thought it might be helpful to others to share what we did to save money before the first snow flies--or if it's already snowing where you are when you read this, it's never too late.

Seriously, you can get ahead of this mess. It's do-able.

Insulation pays for itself over time. Any home improvement big box store or building supply store will have materials on hand to help you determine how much insulation you need and which insulation products will be best for you.

The U.S Department of Energy website provides tons of information and lots of free charts and calculators to help you determine how much insulation you will need for your part of the country, how quickly insulating will pay off for you, and which kinds of insulation you should consider buying. Insulating products always come with a "R-value" which simply measures that particular product's resistance to heat flow. The higher the R-value, the better the insulating properties.

Our government in its infinite wisdom failed to pass the energy tax credit bill for 2008, so unfortunately, if you install the insulation in 2008 you get bupkus in the way of tax savings. However, if your home is badly insulated you are probably better off to go ahead and upgrade your insulation now rather than later anyway. If the expense will be huge and you can hold off until January of 2009, you can save your receipts and get a credit on your 2009 taxes. To find out exactly how much money you can save by holding off until 2009 to install your insulation, check out this handy government chart on federal tax credits.

Although you can't deduct the cost of these materials, caulking leaks around the foundation and around windows will also help, as will weatherstripping. You can buy foam insulation to shove into the gap between your foundation and the wood part of your house (if you have a basement) and this will stop a surprising amount of heat loss without much effort or expense.

If you have storm windows, use them. If you don't, you can buy inexpensive shrink-plastic kits (I've seen them for about a buck a package) to cover your windows and thereby provide some protection from wind and cold. Another option (and you can use this no matter what your situation) is to make some insulating drapes or shades. Warm Company provides a free downloadable instruction guide at their website that shows you how to do this step by step. It's not difficult and it doesn't have to be expensive. You can do it yourself for as little as $15 per window, or you can spend more and have someone else do it for you.

Finally, most utility companies will provide free energy audits that will show you exactly where and how you are wasting heat (and other forms of energy) so you can address the situation and save yourself some money.

Look, I know this stuff is boring. Nobody wants to spend money on insulation and caulking, any more than they want to spend entire weekends installing installation and caulking windows and door frames.

But think of it this way:

If you only save yourself $20 a month in heating and cooling costs (which is not that hard to accomplish--you may save a lot more if you have a very leaky house), that's $240 a year, or $2400 over ten years.

You could buy a pretty fancy TV for $2400 and sit in your nice warm home and watch it. Or you could buy 100 hardcover books, new, and take them home and read them in your nice warm house. Or, you could invest the $2400 in a four year CD at 5% (in this hideous economy some bank will be offering them any minute here, you watch) and bump that $2400 up to nearly $3000.

You could find a use for a $3000, couldn't you?

Wood heat smells good, is warm and constant, and creates a relaxing ambiance that oil and gas just can't match. However, installing a wood stove is not a good project for most beginners because of strict building codes meant to prevent house fires. So before you decide to buy a wood stove to save yourself money on home heating, ask yourself a few questions:

1) What are the fire safety requirements in your area for wood stoves? The cost of buying a wood stove isn't limited to the stove itself--you also have to buy all the chimney and vent equipment that comes with the stove, and you have to make sure it is all installed properly and up to local building codes. If you've never installed a wood stove, it pays to hire a licensed contractor to do it and then have it inspected for fire safety afterwards.

2) Wood stoves create creosote build-up in the chimney. Creosote is a by-product of wood burning that is itself highly flammable. if not cleaned out regularly, creosote in the chimney can ignite, resulting in a nasty house fire. Make sure you factor the cost of regular cleaning into your estimate. Also, be aware that if you do not install your stove up to code, your home insurance company will eventually find out and cancel your policy. Once you have had a home insurance policy canceled, it's really hard to obtain another policy at an affordable rate. So you'll want all your ducks in a row before just hauling in a few logs and setting them on fire in your front room.

3) Do you really have access to a large supply of cheap or free wood? If not, are you willing to pay for wood? Have you checked the cost in your area? My fantasy about wood stoves is that they make heating your house free, but the truth is, you need wood. The wood doesn't just hop into your stove and light itself, and in some areas a truckload of wood isn't cheap.

4) If you do have a ready supply of free wood, are you sure you want to haul and chop wood all the time? It's great exercise, but if you routinely work twelve-hour days or are in poor health you may be underestimating the effort involved in keeping that woodpile stocked. Talk to someone who has a stove already about wood chopping and the volume of wood they use before jumping in.

Pellet stoves are a good alternative to wood stoves for some people. We chose to install a pellet stove in our house after this summer shortly finding out what a hassle it was to get oil delivered. Pellet stoves burn small pellets of compressed sawdust or saw grass. Most will also burn dried corn or cherry pits.

Right now, a ton of wood pellets runs around $145 in our part of the U.S. Two tons provides more pellets than we need to get through the winter. A friend of ours buys one ton each year and gets free cherry pits from a nearby cannery and gets through the entire winter on that.

The pellets come prepackaged in a palstic bag about the size of a compost bag and can be stacked in a garage or shed. A ton of bags stacked in 6' by 6' square about four feet high makes a ton. The don't take up as much room as you would expect and right now they are easy to find.

Pellet stoves vary in price from just under $1000 to several thousand, depending on the features you want. Ours is a basic model that ran $1100. The installation kit cost around $350. Unlike wood stoves, pellet stoves can be directing vented outside (no chimney required) and can be placed only six inches from an inside wall. They make very little waste so creosote is not an issue. We empty about a cup of ash from the tray every 10 to 14 days.

We will save nearly $1000 our very first winter by using the pellet stove instead of the oil furnance in the basement, and that's including the cost of the stove itself and the pellets too. After that, we're looking at thousands each winter in savings. I will write a separate hub on pellet stoves and place a link to it in this hub once it's finished.

Space heaters are popular but not that energy-efficient. In fact, they are so inefficient that it's hard to find any effiiciency ratings on them. They use a lot of electricity, which isn't cheap, but if you do need to use one, the ceramic ones suck up the least juice. Kerosene space heaters are fodder for a separate hub. They can be very dangerous when misused.

My rule of thumb is, I don't want to see any numbers higher than 6 on the thermostat, because if I do see them it means we are using too much heat. My better half is less tolerant. So we compromise and keep the temperature around 67-69 most of the time.

Cranking up the heat dries out nasal passages and makes everyone in the house more susceptible to colds and sinus problems. Teenagers are especially fond of running around in bare feet and boxer shorts in the dead of January, but there is nothing in the Constitution listing this as a God-given right.

If you don't own any wool socks or sweaters, it's time to stock up. You'll probably have to buy the socks new, but once you have them, they last for years. The sweaters can be picked up for almost nothing by visiting Goodwill or Salvation Army stores in the spring, when no one wants them and they are put up for sale for as little as a dollar or less. I've picked up Talbot and Eddie Bauer pure wool, barely-worn clothing this way. Nothing will warm your heart like leaving a thrift store with armloads of designer clothing for a total of under ten bucks.

You can also pick up a supply of those little dollar stretch knit gloves and cut the fingers off of them. It will make you feel like you are living in a Dickens novel but it will also warm you up. And don't forget the cheapest form of birth control on the planet: Flannel pajamas! Wear them with long underwear and you'll be sound asleep before your beloved ever finds your skin.